With my yeast starter and all equipment prepared the night before, I was ready to tackle my first all grain brew. To begin I heated my water to my "strike water" to 163 f.
I added the water to my mash tun first, followed by the crushed grains. I stirred for about 5 minutes and the temperature settled nicely at 152f. After an hour I had only lost about 3 degrees thanks to my Rubbermaid Cooler Mash Tun!
It was now time to collect the wort from the Mash Tun, I opened the valve in anticipation and......
This is all I got!!! I tried back-flushing with air and with water, I tried quickly shaking the mash-tun, I stirred the mash some more and I added about 1 gallon of my heated "sparge water" to thin the mash. Nothing worked. After about 1/2 hour of trying to collect the wort, I had to just dump it all through a strainer. Adding oxygen to hot wort is bad, and this amount of splashing added LOTS of oxygen. I did collect my wort though, and began my boil. Everything else went pretty smooth, and after the boil was complete, the wort was cooled and added to the fermentor.
After a couple of hours I realized I forgot to add the Brown Rice Syrup to the fermentor, so I boiled it along with some water, cooled it, and added it to the wort.
After about a week, I transferred it to the secondary fermentor, where it continues to bubble away! I also added gelatin finings, and the beer has cleared up quite nicely!
It does seem to have a taste that may be described as "stale beer" or "wet cardboard" which is caused by the aeration when the wort was hot. Hopefully that taste dissipates a bit with age.
Cheers!
Sucess will be when you get past the "wet cardboard" stage? - Let me know and I'll come for a drink!
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